Thoughts and Suggestions on Leaving a 9-to-5 Job#
Have you ever thought about leaving your 9-to-5 job? Limited vacation, meager income, no free time, and having to report when there are family matters. It feels like you are burning your life every day to work towards someone else's dreams. But you are also afraid that if you leave, you will lose a stable source of income. What if your entrepreneurial venture fails?
Recently, I watched a podcast interview video featuring YouTube influencer Ali Abdaal and writer Dickie Bush. They earn millions a year and shared their experiences. Ali is a doctor in the UK, and Dickie is a trader on Wall Street. They both built a profitable business in their spare time before quitting to start their own ventures.
Here are my summarized methods for building a career without quitting your job, which will definitely be helpful:
1. Don’t quit easily; try to transition within your job first#
We can categorize the ways we earn money into three types:
- Job: Exchanging time for dollars
- Career: Exchanging performance for dollars
- Business: Exchanging others' time and performance for money
In the initial stage, you should choose a job that allows you to learn skills. If possible, transition from a job to a career as soon as you can, looking for positions with some ownership or incentive mechanisms. This can bring you substantial rewards and help you accumulate initial capital.
2. Make efficient use of your spare time and try to develop a side hustle#
You need to understand the malleability of time. Even with a full-time job, you can carve out time to work on your own business with proper planning. Here are some tips:
- Utilize Parkinson's Law: Set a limited time for yourself to push your business forward; don’t let time expand unnecessarily or wait meaninglessly.
- Reasonable time allocation: Set aside two hours before and after work each day; early on, Pat Walls did just that.
- Use the 80/20 rule: Find the truly important things to focus on.
3. Choose the right direction to develop your business#
A good method is to use the two-year testing framework to find direction. You can review the skills, hobbies, life changes, and work experiences you have accumulated over the past two years, sorting out what is valuable, and then share those insights. What helps you is likely to help others as well.
You can also look ahead to what you want to learn in the next two years and document and share your learning process. Start by summarizing and organizing the knowledge and experiences of industry leaders, gradually forming your own content and framework through extensive reading and learning different perspectives.
4. Overcome the issue of low energy#
If you feel exhausted from your full-time job and lack the energy to develop a side hustle, you need to recognize that this may be a signal for change. Because once you leave your full-time job to start your own business, you will find that you need to be more disciplined. Learn to manage your energy by analyzing which daily activities drain energy and which ones boost it.
5. Set reasonable goals#
If you plan to quit, it’s best to have enough funds to ensure you won’t have to worry about survival for the next year or even two. My advice is to consider quitting only when your side income reaches twice your full-time income and remains stable for 3 to 6 months. This is because side hustles often have fluctuations, and achieving double income can prove your capability.
6. Have your own product#
You must have your own product, which is the crystallization of what you have learned, done, and solved problems through. By continuously improving yourself, you will generate many crystallizations, achieving unlimited development of your product. In the creator economy, you don’t need to worry about competition because you are always creating your own products and working on your own projects.